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President Trump Slams Amazon For 'Causing Tremendous Loss To the United States' (cnet.com)
President Trump escalated his attack on Amazon on Thursday, saying that the e-commerce giant does not pay enough taxes, and strongly suggested that he may try to rein in the e-commerce business. From a report: The president took aim at Amazon's tax contributions, its use of the US Postal Service and practices that put "many thousands of retailers out of business!" The accusations aren't new. The tweet was likely prompted by an Axios story on Wednesday that claimed Trump was weighing "going after" Amazon over alleged antitrust activities or violations of competition laws. The Axios story appeared to contribute to a selloff of Amazon stock Wednesday, with Amazon shares dropping 4.4 percent, even though Trump's disdain for Amazon and its CEO, Jeff Bezos, was already well-known. Bezos owns The Washington Post, whose coverage has been less than glowing about the new president, which may be a factor in Trump's attacks. Trump's tweet, in full: I have stated my concerns with Amazon long before the Election. Unlike others, they pay little or no taxes to state & local governments, use our Postal System as their Delivery Boy (causing tremendous loss to the U.S.), and are putting many thousands of retailers out of business!
Hasn't Trump been the master of manipulating the tax code to his own benefit? Didn't he say during one of the debates that not paying taxes for multiple years, because of a bankruptcy filing, made him "smart"?
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I don't agree with what the dude said, but I do find it interesting that folks tend to have missed a perfect opportunity to admire his speaking about making the rich pay their Fair Share(tm).
I mean, damn... if there was ever a time when the entire left-wing could've gotten together and said " Yeah! Make the evil corporation pay!!! "
Oh well. Mod this post on down for pointing that out, I got karma to burn off *shrug*.
Okay, meanwhile, there's a vast difference between some politician's ramblings, and the issuance of an executive order, a bill (viz. Congress), or regulatory guidance memos.I wonder if anyone out there knows that?
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
because they keep getting bought up in Bain Capital style leveraged buy-outs and then saddled with debt that prevents them from adequately competing with Amazon. To cut costs they turn their stores into dirty little warehouses. This is what happened to Toys R Us. And they were one of the lucky ones. They survived 13 years before the debt crushed them.
If Trump doesn't like the post office subsidizing Amazon there's a really, really easy solution: raise the rates. Problem solved. And if he doesn't like how they treat their workers he could raise federal minimum wage and drop the work week to 30/week before overtime kicked in. The latter might require congress to act but it's popular enough that if he'd stop attacking them on Twitter and take congress to task for not doing anything for the working man he'd have it done in a week. Especially if he did it right before mid-terms.
But this is all just a distraction. And an political attack on a company run by people that don't particularly like him. It'd be funny watching to rich and powerful guys in a pissing match if their actions didn't effect me so drastically.
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If they want to go after someone that is abusing the USPS it's the Chinese sellers that use international postal law to get the USPS to pay the expensive last mile.
^^^^ This.
Gah, it pains me to have to defend Amazon, but seriously, why is it so hard to understand why a company who ships 600 million packages per year gets a bulk discount?
Exactly! The same would be true of any courier service. If you do a LOT of shipping, you will get discount rates. Buying any good or service in bulk will almost inevitably lead to discounts on pricing, and if it doesn't, then you should go elsewhere for your good or service.
This whole attack on Amazon, on top of the Trump Administration's attacks on free trade and the threat of tariffs, makes me think Americans voted in a 19th century president. The whole idea that somehow because a business is disruptive to pre-existing business models as somehow representing a bad development is something I would have expected from any pre-Theodore Roosevelt president.
My view is that Amazon's disruption of retail is not only inevitable (if Amazon hadn't done it, someone else would have, and Amazon is hardly the only one causing the disruption, eBay is up there too), but a good thing. The retail industry has basically remained static for years, and even the "revolutionary" giants like Walmart and Target (with their highly sophisticated JIT inventory systems) had been resting on their laurels. Consumers, to a large extent, were captive to whatever the retailers wanted to sell them. Along comes new retail markets like Amazon and eBay, where consumers now have a much higher level of control, where the feedback between buyer and seller is far more direct, and all of sudden even the traditional giants are seeing sales targets slipping.
So really, Trump isn't a Capitalist at all, maybe more of an old school Mercantilist.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I'm not sure. I don't think Trump has any real philosophy, I would be truly surprised if it was anything more than "Bad = Washington Post = Jeff Bezos = Amazon". I really think it might be just that simple, Why now? Well Trump can't attack Stormy Daniels, so he's taking his wrath out on someone else who bothers him...
Fanatically anti-fanatical
Can we hold coal companies to the same standard, or allow them to chew up their employees, spit them out when they're too broken down to work, and then welch on their pension obligations?
I don't know what kind of bizaro world I've stumbled into where Republicans are defending a generous pension quasi government entity and democrats are defending the most cut throat capitalistic company in the US currently. Do we all just reflexively side either pro or anti Trump then proceed to rationalize that decision with whatever mental contortions are necessary to avoid any serious challenge to or growth in the way we view the world?
LOLOL... SERIOUSLY?!?
Most of them use ePacket now... a wholly USPS owned and operated service with depots in every major manufacturing hub in China.
So lets get this right... USPS sets up this system just for US Tech companies to get electronic parts and modules from China delivered cheap and quick... and you want to "go after them" for USING IT?
*Shakes head*
mnem
Now for something completely... the same old Western Corporate-Centric BS.
Do we all just reflexively side either pro or anti Trump then proceed to rationalize ...
Trump's problem with Amazon is really about his dislike of Jeff Bezos and The Washington Post (Jeff owns both) and the things the newspaper writes about Trump. Trump calling things "fake news" doesn't make them actually so...
Not trolling (really), but... to address your comments. The problem with Trump is that about 99% of everything he says is either flat-out wrong or easily-provably false. The safe, rational bet is to stand on the opposite side of whatever he's talking about.
The tweet in the TFS looks to be full of errors and/or half-truths, except for the part about harming retailers -- but is that really Amazon's fault or the people and retailers that sell through them. As to the other statements, Amazon *pays* the USPS to delivery things, albeit at a discount -- just like FedEx and UPS do for some last-mile deliveries. As for how much taxes Amazon and their retailers pay, that's on the State and Federal Congresses and the laws they pass. However, I have trouble believing that Trump and the Republicans want a rich person and company to pay *more* taxes, especially after the tax hand-job they gave their buddies and themselves in the recent tax bill.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
When Trump was confronted about being a billionaire and not paying any income tax his comment was along the lines of "that makes me smart". So by his logic if Amazon is paying less in taxes that makes THEM smart.
does not mean that Congress should do so
I love it when people think the private industry is what's best for public utilities and services. You've learnt nothing from the internet, you'll learn nothing after you mail gets delivered once every 2 weeks and you get charged not only for sending it but also for receiving it. Go capitalism.